Salvation and Godly Rule

Salvation by Love & Hate

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: Salvation by Love & Hate

Genre: Speech

Track: 16

Dictation Name: RR136H16

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people. Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord glory due unto His name. Bring an offering and come into His courts. O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before Him, all the earth. It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High, to show forth thy loving-kindness in the morning and thy faithfulness every night. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, thou who art Lord of heaven and earth, and all things therein, we come again into thy presence, rejoicing in thy mercies and blessings, and confident in thy government. We commit ourselves afresh into thy care. We pray for thy delivering and blessing hand upon thy faithful ones behind the Iron Curtain, that thou wouldst bless them, O Lord, and confound their persecutors. We thank thee, our Father, that thou art He who dost make all things work together for good, and in this confidence, our Father, we come to thee to wait on thee by thy word and by thy Spirit. Bless us. Prosper us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Our scripture lesson is from the gospel according to St. Luke. Luke 18:9-14. Our subject: Salvation By Love and Hate. “And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”

To speak of salvation by love and hate would be very offensive to the love people, who speak of redemption by love, and yet the terms love and hate must be coupled. If we love truth, we hate a lie, and if, as these love people who call themselves also the friends of mankind and lovers of men, love mankind, they must also, logically, hate the enemies of mankind, and of course, this is the fact. The love people are very passionate haters. Moreover, they see the right kind of hate as a mark of the redeemed.

{?} look at American history in recent years. During the early 1950’s, for the liberals, a mark of election, of being one of the elect people, was that you hated Senator McCarthy. Since then, they’ve had various other signs of the elect. In the early 1960’s, it was hating Senator Goldwater. Now, it’s being someone who hates the war on Vietnam and the South Vietnamese, or Wallace, or Nixon, or whatever the case may be. Similarly, conservatives have had their object of hate. Very often, you can define a conservative group in terms of whom they hate, the people they love to hate.

Now, there is nothing necessary wrong with hate, nor is there anything necessary right with love. Hate is wrong if we hate righteousness. Love is wrong if we love evil. However, the contrary is not necessarily true. It is not necessarily right to love righteousness, nor necessarily right to hate evil, in that both can be aspects of Phariseeism. That’s what our {?} is about. Our Lord was not guilty of caricature. He gives us a very accurate portrait. When he gives us the picture of the Pharisee, he does not say that the Pharisee is a {?}, so we have a picture of a Pharisee who is a very moral man, who fasts, who tithes, who is a man of very high standards therefore, and of dedicated faith. He means business. Thus, we’d have to say that, morally speaking, the Pharisee is far superior to most Christians, because most Christians do not tithe.

Moreover, there is no evidence that this man was doing these things simply out of necessary or a sense of duty. As a matter of fact, many of the Pharisees truly enjoyed doing what they did and believed in it. Thus, Rabbi Prousner{?} gives us a very telling statement of the attitude of good Pharisees then and since then, concerning all the details of the Sabbath regulations which were especially strict, and he says, “To be sure, whoever reads all the Sabbath laws in the Mishna, or Tosefta can easily come to the point of despair because of the multiplicity of restrictions in them, yet it is well-known that the Jews enjoyed the Sabbath and were not pained by it. Also today, there is no more common expression among the Jews, even among the simplest of them, than the expression ‘enjoyment of the Sabbath.’” He is talking about Orthodox Jews, because he is one. This is the case to such an extent that Ahad Haam{?}, one of the most liberal-minded of Jews, yet with all his liberalism, a defender of historic Judaism, could express the following sentiment: “To a greater extent than Israel has kept the Sabbath, has the Sabbath kept Israel.” We can fully agree with Rabbi Prousner{?} without touching the meaning of the {?}. Sociologically, the Pharisee was right. Sociologically, he represented a far, high standard, and our Lord was accurate in presenting him and the prayer of the Pharisee was accurate in its self-portrayal. Sociologically, the Sabbath did keep Israel. There’s no mistaking that.

The point remains, however, that God was not pleased, either with the Pharisee or with Israel’s Sabbath keeping. He did not condemn, thereby, tithing, morality, or Sabbath keeping.

In recent years, a very important work, a two-volume study entitled The Pharisees has been written by Rabbi Finkelstein. Now, Rabbi Finkelstein has, in that book really, directly his book at Christians and particularly against Jesus Christ and our Lord’s portrayal of the Pharisees. He never refers to this parable of the Pharisee and the publican, and yet, very clearly, the whole book is written as an answer to it.

The subtitle of Rabbi Finkelstein’s book is very interesting. It reads The Sociological Background of Their Faith. Now, the sociological importance of the law cannot be denied. When God gave the law, He said “Do this and ye shall live.” In Deuteronomy 28, He gives us the consequences of obedience to His law, and the consequences of disobedience, and the first and foremost point in obeying the law, is that it is God’s word, not that it benefits us, and this is where Phariseeism had turned the whole thing upside down. It kept the law, not because God required it, but think of the benefits of keeping the law. They were pragmatists. Now modern pragmatism is anti-Christian, anti-law. In that respect, it’s more stupid by far than Phariseeism was, because Phariseeism wanted the law of God without the God of that law. It was saying, in effect, “God is right about the effects. We want the results, the effects of the law without the God of the law,” but the primary reference of the law is to God, and in God then to men. “Seek ye first,” our Lord said, “the kingdom of God and His righteousness and then all these things shall be added unto you.”

Phariseeism saw the value of the law to man, and it made that paramount. Therefore, the Pharisee could look at the publican and say, “Now, sociologically, this man is no good in our society.” The Pharisee today would look at the people who are on the lower levels of society, he would look at the Negroes and take the same attitude. Now, the godly attitude does not take the sentimental attitude toward them, so that neither looking down on them and ruling them out, or taking a sentimental attitude is the right. The godly attitude is to require them to meet God’s law standard and to judge them in terms of God’s law standard, not in terms of a sociological standard.

Now, in the twentieth century, we have Phariseeism, but it’s not anywhere near as competent or as able as the Phariseeism of our Lord’s day. The Pharisee could, at least say to a degree, he kept God’s law, but he would not look at God. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. His frame of reference was himself. God was only there as an insurance policy. The publican saw himself in terms of the sovereign God and His requirement, and the publican came for grace and salvation, not for a sociological justification, but a theological justification, which he received. This man went down to his house justified rather than the other. This does not mean he remained a publican. This would mean to confound the Gospel. He became then a believer, who went out an obeyed God not because it paid off, but because God required it, and in gratitude to God for his salvation.

In our day, Phariseeism and a belief in salvation by love have proliferated. In a recent book on Sweden by Huntford, an English writer, entitled The New Totalitarians, an extremely important boo, he gives us quite a vivid picture of what Sweden is today. It’s the world, he says, of Huxley’s Brave New World, and he says, in effect, that there are two kinds of pictures of the future, of a humanistic, totalitarian future. One is 1984, which the Marxist countries are working towards. The other is the world of Huxley’s Brave New World, where through total brainwashing, everyone is taken without coercion, except as a last resort, into a mindless, controlled state, and Marxists follow the Orwell model of 1984.

In Sweden, he says they are much further along than in the Soviet Union, and the model is Huxley’s world, and so he said they go through the ritual of love and hate, everything they have been given by the Swedish socialist state they must forever be grateful for, and they must love that state, but the enemy, it has been made to be the United States, and so they go through their regular ritual of hate. Everything that the United States represents is diabolical, demonic, and so he states Swedish conscience is, in fact, catharsis through ritual hate. It is akin to the two-minute hate of 1984. Indeed, during the Vietnam War, the popular Swedish dislike of President Johnson had something of the grotesque fury of Goldstein in Orwell’s novel. “I feel so emancipated,” a Swedish housewife once said in a newspaper interview after a particularly violent demonstration before the American embassy in Stockholm,” and of course, there you have it. To feel emancipated through hate. This is Phariseeism. By going there before the American Embassy, the symbol of the world demon, and demonstrating and carrying placards, and shouting all kinds of insults against America, what Pharisaic righteousness. They feel good. “I feel emancipated. I feel freed.” She’s obviously on the right side. This is justification. It’s salvation through love and hate. Obviously, she is one of the elect. Does she not hate America with a passion?

This is precisely why, in dictatorships, people are manipulated with their ritual hate and their ritual love. They hate evil, however evil is defined, and they love righteousness, however righteousness is defined. And of course, it is sociological.

Remember Caiaphas, the high priest? “It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.” This is the essence of it. It is good for us that one man should die for the whole people, sociologically, that the nation, sociological frame of reference, perish not.

For socialists, salvation by love and hate is that the good man loves socialism. He hates capitalism. For the conservatives, it’s that the good man hates communism, and he loves capitalism. For the liberals, a good man loves the people and he hates the special interests, and they’re all Pharisees. Why? In all three definitions, the good man may be dishonest, he may be sexually immoral, he may be a liar, but he’s on the right side and therefore, he is in the camp of the redeemed. Recently, when I was on my trip, I visited with an economist who once worked for one of the wealthier conservatives of the United States, and he found the man to be a thorough wretch, a big donor to every kind of conservative cause, but sexually immoral, dishonest towards his employees, and his word never to be trusted. He was a conservative because he hated to pay taxes to the government, a thorough moral wretch, but he said every time anywhere he tried to say something about this man, he was harshly told, “He’s a good man, and he’s on our side,” and that settled the matter. Sociological justification. Salvation by love and hate. This man was one of the elect. Didn’t he hate socialist However, tainted his reasons, and love capitalism?

The Swedish housewife felt emancipated, and a great many people, conservatives, socialists, liberals feel emancipated the same way because they hate the right thing, and they love the right thing, and they doubt those who shouted, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” also went home feeling emancipated. Weren’t they hating the person who was trying to destroy the nation? Salvation by love and hate is very much with us, and everywhere you turn, people have their definition how you’re to be saved by love and hate.

Henry Miller has said that we must love the body, and the appetites of the body, and he says, “Culture originates in the denial of life and the body,” and therefore, we must destroy culture. We must destroy civilization. We must destroy civilization. We must destroy books, reading, everything. At one point, he thought of calling one of his books, The Last Book, to indicate that all books should be ended, all houses, everything that smacked of culture, civilization, and then man can attain, he says, a state of undeluded law after he has disposed of all these hateful things.

Thus, can man ever have salvation into a world of undeluded love, by Pharisees? By love and hate? As long as man sees himself and his love as ultimate, so long will he be consumed with hate, with unremitting hate, because as long as there’s another man in the world, there’s someone to frustrate him and his sociological frame of reference, because when the frame of reference is man, you eliminate God and you say mankind, but which part of mankind when it’s my will be done, man’s will? Ultimately, it’s every man against every man, wherein man makes himself ultimate, he has no Sabbath. He can never disengage himself from the world to rest. As long as he is alive, as long as another man is alive to frustrate him, as long as the world exists which doesn’t do what he wants, nature or anything in the world, he will hate only when man bows down before the sovereign God can man then have a Sabbath. Only then can man disengage himself from the world, for this is the meaning of the Sabbath, of rest. To disengage oneself. It is not man’s love nor hate, man’s work nor supervision, man’s planning or government which either saves man or which ultimately governs and determines reality. Man has his place in the government of things under God, but our salvation is the work of God. The government of the universe is the work of God. Known unto God are all His works from the foundation of the world, scripture tells us. Therefore, man can have a Sabbath when he is a Christian. Only then can he disengage himself because it doesn’t’ depend on him. When it depends upon man, man cannot rest. This is why the scripture says, “There is no rest saith my God unto the wicked.” They cannot rest. Everything depends on them. They can never disengage themselves. They can run away from work. They can seek escape in idleness, in leisure, but they can never rest because they can never disengage themselves.

For the humanist, everything depends upon himself, and therefore, he must always divide the world in terms of love and hate, and have an enemy to blame for his hatred, for his failure{?}. A true Sabbath, therefore, can only exist in a world created by God, because only in a world created by God is God the governor and savior. Where faith in God and His victory are lacking, then the Sabbath, even in Christian circles, becomes only a monastic retreat, a surrender of the world. Today, in non-Christian circles, it’s not surprising that there is a new concept of the Sabbath and in some literature, it has been so-called the drug experience.

Huxley, who wrote of the Brave New World, saw what was coming but he had no escape for it except to say perhaps we will develop in the days ahead some kind of drug which will give us a rest, an escape, a Sabbath, something. He hoped that LSD was that Sabbath for man. He wrote a book or two about it. The drug experience is very closely tied to the humanistic quest for a Sabbath, for disengagement from the world, and they will not give up their quest for a Sabbath, nor will they ever attain it, for there is no Sabbath apart from Christ because there is none other name under heaven by which men may be saved. The attempt to find salvation by man’s works of love and hate therefore, is doomed.

“There is no rest, saith my God to the wicked,” but for us, because we have our salvation in Jesus Christ, we can disengage ourselves. We can take hands off our work, hands off of our own lives, knowing that the ultimate government thereof is in the hand of God, who doeth all things well. We therefore, have this confidence of this joy, that He who hath begun a good work in us will continue it to the end. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who hast given us a Sabbath rest in Jesus Christ, teach us therefore, to rest in Him, to do our work in the confidence that our labor is not in vain in the Lord, and to disengage ourselves from our work, and to take hands of our work and our lives, and to rest in thee. O Lord, our God, how great thou art, and how glorious is our Sabbath rest in Jesus Christ, and we praise thee. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}Sweden, {?}then he spoke of their philosophy when he said at the end of this, we build {?} because we have to, not to make {?} not to give {?} but because we have to.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and Huntford points out that now, as their education is producing a generation after the image of their dream, not only is the creative mind disappearing, but the productive mind is showing signs of waning, so they will face a problem in the future with regard to production. They already have a problem with alcoholism, and a problem with suicide. Now, the suicide rate, the Swedish government, claims is not the highest in the Western world, and they are right, but the significance about the Swedish suicide rate is that it’s very high among the superior element. They lose more superior people to suicide than any other country. This is very significant. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Huntford. The New Totalitarians, and it’s published by Stein and Day. Let me get the citation a little more fully. It’s Roland Huntford, The New Totalitarians, New York, Stein and Day, published 1972. It’s an extremely important study. Huntford’s point is, of course, that Sweden is simply further along the line than we are. He also makes the significant point that they borrowed their educational ideas from the United States, from our schools, and are simply applying them more thoroughly and with no resistance. It’s a very important study.

[Audience] Is S-t-e-i-n the publisher?

[Rushdoony] S-t-e-i-n and Day. Stein and Day. You should be able to get this in almost any big bookstore, such as Pickwicks, or it could be ordered. Very important. Yes?

[Audience] {?} Pharisee {?}

[Rushdoony] Of, of course, it’s humanism but it’s also a humanistic love, yes, and they feel that by loving the right things they are saved, and this is the hallmark, and this is what humanism does whether it’s conservative or liberal, or radical. You’re on the right side if you love the right things. In other words, the whole framework is sociological. Now, we saw an example of that just recently when our vice president Agnew defined the moral man as the one who is for the Vietnam War, and an immoral man is against the Vietnam War. Now, I think his criticism of some of the critics of the war was very well taken, but what a desperately wicked thing to define morality not in terms of God’s word, but the foreign policy of the United States. That’s desperately wicked, and that’s precisely the thing we’ve come to. Both the left and the right do it. As a matter of fact, you go some place and they want to know where you stand on the Vietnam War, campus students especially, the radicals, and you’re moral or immoral in terms of “are you against the Vietnam War?” That’s a sign of a moral man, and Agnew says the sign of a moral man is one who’s for the government policy. Since when is our foreign policy the standard of judgment? It has to be God’s word, but you see where humanism leads us? You have to say in a situation like that, a plague on both your houses. You’re both ungodly. You’re both desperately wicked, when you make such a standard the criterion of judgment. Any other questions?

We have a few minutes and I’d like to share an editorial with you from the Presbyterian Journal, published in North Carolina. It’s not an official paper of any sort, so no church can claim it.

“Some truths have to be repeated again and again. They are basic, and human nature being what it is, we all need to be reminded. We thought of that when a letter came across the desk from a Christian friend, who was reflecting on the possible effects of the new rafroshman{?}, between the United States and communist China. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful, wrote our friend, ‘if the leaders of China would let down the bars to a preaching of the Gospel? What a difference it would make if Christians should be found in the leadership of that communist country. We need to be reminded again and again not only that communism is godless, but why communism is godless. It simply will not work among believers. The basic philosophy is incompatible with the Christian faith, and where communism enters, primo faca evidence exists that Christian faith has departed. In other words, there is no such thing as Christian communism. The two terms are mutually contradictory. Whenever you see or hear Marxist principles supported by a churchman, you can assume with perfect safety that either the churchman doesn’t know what he is doing, or genuine Christian faith is absent. Walk into the Moscow Historical Museum and on the wall you will see a plack with Lenin’s famous dictum, ‘Religion is the opiate of the people.’”

Then he goes on, the editor, to point out why communism is anti-Christian. It makes man the measure, and therefore, it can never be Christian, and then he goes on to say at some length, it’s a very simply philosophy, and it’s thoroughly humanistic, and so, he says, it must always be godless. It cannot be godly. You cannot make man the measure and worship God. You cannot make equality the measure and have a godly standard, and so he says, to think that somehow there’s going to be a backdoor into communism and Christianity will somehow get into Red China, or Red Russia, is to kid yourself. You’re not judging the thing in terms of scripture. There is an inescapable enmity between God and Satan. There can be no peace there, and there will be no peace between those who are Marxist and those who are Christian. The title is “It’s Always Godless.” Humanism is always godless.

Are there anymore comments or questions? We have just a minute or two. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] We must, of course, be concerned with God’s truth, but we must be sure we know what God’s truth is and to realize that God’s truth will be propagated primarily by God, not by man, and all our fussy and fretting isn’t going to make a nickel’s worth of difference. Some fundamentalists indeed claim to defend God’s truth, but what they’re defending is really their ideas, or the Schofield notes, and something like that, which is not God’s truth, and the weakness, of course, with fundamentalism is that in defending God’s truth, so called, it is really defending, very often, humanism, because it says the salvation of man is the most important thing, and the Westminster Catechism is so right here. “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” When we make man’s salvation the goal, we’ve gone astray, and we have become humanistic, and most of fundamentalism today is humanistic. The Pharisees said, “What does it to for society? The nation? This people? And it’s better then for the one man to perish, and Finkelstein and Prousner see nothing wrong with the Pharisee in the parable, although they don’t mention him, but they’re writing against our Lord at that point. Sociologically, these people were superior, and Phariseeism produces this type of self-righteous superiority, you have to admit that, but this isn’t the goal anymore than the saving the soul is good. The sociological product, fine. The salvation of souls, fine, but “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” We can never say the salvation of man or the welfare of society is more important than the will of God. Yes?

[Audience] {?} Rabbi Finkelstein {?} mentor of Chief Justice {?}

[Rushdoony] Finkelstein is a humanist and, of course, Juan {?} is also, and so it’s logical for humanists to be drawn to each other. The frame of reference is the same. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Psalm 139, “Do I not hate them . . . “

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, “Am I not grieved with those that rise up against thee,” and he continues, “I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them mine enemies.” In other words, what David is here saying, “I do not count those who are against me, my enemies, nor a virtue to hate them, but those that are against the Lord. Those are my truest enemies, and therefore, I hate them with a perfect hatred.”

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, he was not. “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” Now, we must hate humanism and humanists. We may not ever know them. They may never have had any personal dealings with us, but under God, we must hate all humanism. Now, that’s different than hating somebody because he’s rubbed us the wrong way, you see. It’s not something personal. It’s in terms of a principle, in terms of God. That’s the difference.

Well, our time is up now. Let’s bow our heads for the benediction.

And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape